WAVE

Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk first built Sendwave, an app for cheap international remittances to Africa, which was sold to WorldRemit in 2020. Along the way they saw how expensive it was to send money within a country.

In Senegal, sending money to a family member through the telecom wallets could cost several percent of the transfer. For a laborer sending $50 home, that adds up fast.

They launched Wave in Senegal in 2018 with a radical price. A flat 1%.

No hidden fees. The simplicity was the product.

Wave became the first startup in francophone Africa to reach unicorn status when it raised $200 million at a $1.7 billion valuation in 2021.

Wave charges a flat 1% to send money, and deposits and withdrawals are free. No fixed fees and no hidden charges.

That was dramatically cheaper than the telecom-run mobile money services it competes with, like Orange Money, which charged several percent on many transfers. Wave makes money on volume.

The model requires massive transaction volume and a big agent network where people can deposit and withdraw cash.

Wave mobile money app (send, receive, pay bills, buy airtime), Wave business accounts for merchants, and the Wave agent network for cash deposits and withdrawals

Wave reached about one in three adults in Senegal within a few years of launch, one of the fastest financial product adoptions in the country's history. It expanded to Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, The Gambia and other West African markets, and by 2025 it had more than 20 million monthly users, about 150,000 agents and a Cameroon launch through a partnership with Commercial Bank Cameroon.

The playbook is simple. Undercut incumbents on price, build a fast and beautiful app, train agents intensively.

Word of mouth spreads fast in markets where the incumbent product is expensive and confusing.

Building a mobile money network means building a physical cash-in, cash-out agent network, small shops and kiosks where customers can deposit and withdraw cash. That requires on-the-ground operations in countries with very different regulators, infrastructure and competitors.

Wave also has to fight entrenched operators like Orange Money and MTN Mobile Money, which are backed by some of the biggest telecom companies in Africa. Winning required pricing and simplicity the telcos could not match without cannibalizing their own margins, and keeping fees that low means Wave has leaned on debt to fund its growth.

Sequoia Heritage, Founders Fund, Stripe and Ribbit Capital co-led the $200 million Series A in 2021. In June 2025 Wave raised 117 million euros (about $137 million) in debt led by Rand Merchant Bank, with British International Investment, Finnfund and Norfund taking part.